A look back at 2017Register PajaronianAnxiety over the results of the November 2016 election, when Donald Trump, a candidate who had a markedly rigid stance on immigration, emerged victorious in the presidential race. Fear in Watsonville’s large undocumented population that their families …

How to Infuriate Thousands Without Really Tryingseattlepi.com (blog)
Or maybe it’s because I recently published a book called I am So Sick of White Guys, with a cover illustration of President Trump depicted as a puppet of Russian president Putin. Yeah, that just might be what stirred the hornet’s nest. In fact …

Its been famously said that Special Counsel Robert Mueller loves surprises. He likes to catch his suspects and subjects off guard by taking actions they never saw coming. Thats led many to ask if Mueller might be planning a holiday surprise in the Trump-Russia scandal, while everyone involved is distracted. So its notable that the FBI just raided a home in Northern Virginia this evening.

Thus far we only know a handful of details: the FBI raid definitely happened, and it took place in Sterling, Virginia. Donald Trump does own a golf course in that town, but the local TV affiliate is reporting that it took place in a residential area, which rules out the golf course (link). The FBI has previously raided Paul Manaforts home in Northern Virginia, but thats in Alexandria, not in Sterling. Michael Flynn also has a home in Northern Virginia, but its also in Alexandria, and its unlikely his home would be raided after he cut a plea deal. So whats going on?

To be clear, this could be entirely coincidental, and it may have nothing to do with the Trump-Russia scandal. The FBI certainly has plenty of other business to conduct beyond exposing the crimes of Donald Trump and his associates. But it is worth noting that Mueller has run a portion of his investigation out of the federal court district in Virginia which has jurisdiction over this area. In addition, a number of political figures in Washington DC have homes in northern Virginia.

So will this turn out to be something or nothing? We may not know for some time. In addition to loving surprises, Robert Mueller also loves secrecy. So if this is about Trump-Russia, its entirely possible the FBI could leak a cover story to try to distract from it. After all, we didnt learn about the raid of Manaforts house, or the arrest of George Papadopoulos, until long after they took place.

The fruits of crisis: Alabama’s top political stories of 2017Gadsden Times
If 2016 proved a year of crisis in state government, 2017 was when the fruits of those crises finally blossomed. The state saw a governor fall and a new senator elected to the U.S. Senate. But there were a host of other matters that will likely …

Guidelines for news-watching and staying sane in 2018Kansas City Star (blog)
For political-watchers, news media, political operatives, candidates and officials, 2017 was let’s be honest exhausting. The constant churn of news, the unending assaults on our sense of decency and expectations for government officials, the …

Army recruits now being trained in counter-terrorismThe Indian Express
WHILE the basic tenets of military training for the recruits remain the same, the training has now evolved to meet the challenges of sub-conventional warfare, including counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency and if necessary anti-naxalite operations …

For weeks, prominent Republicans in Congress have begun trying to smear Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Now we know why. Earlier this week we learned that Mueller has been investigating the Republican Party’s role in the Trump-Russia scandal. Now we’re learning that Mueller is specifically investigating Trump, the Republican Party, and Russia for their roles in conspiring to rig multiple key swing states in the 2016 election.

Russian trolls micro-targeted voters in Wisconsin and Michigan, feeding them fake political news in order to trick them into voting under false pretenses, thus rigging the outcome of the election in those two states. The trolls in question had the kind of sophisticated knowledge and profiling of specific voters in these states that they almost certainly couldn’t have come up with on their own. Now, according to New York Magazine (link), Mueller is seeking to prove that the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee provided this voter data to the Russians.

This is the most specific confirmation to date that Mueller is indeed seeking to prove that Trump and his Republican allies did in fact rig the outcome of the election by illegally conspiring with Russia to alter the outcome. This will prove that Donald Trump was not legitimately elected President of the United States, and that Hillary Clinton was the rightful winner. It will also be enough to send a swath of people involved, including anyone at the RNC who signed off on this, to prison.

By his own admission, Jared Kushner was deeply involved in the Trump campaign’s voter data analysis effort, which was largely handled by a company called Cambridge Analytica. Steve Bannon ran that company just before he took over the Trump campaign. Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort called Trump just before election day and told him to go to Michigan. Any of these people can provide evidence that Donald Trump was in on the treasonous plot, which is why Robert Mueller is targeting them all.

Universal truths about the media in 2017Washington Examiner
The Washington Post, New York Times, and USA Today still refuse to employ a single columnist that won’t begin each piece with anything less than Mr. Trump, you are a liar! CNN this year had to retract one story and significantly modify a second one…

Alabama Teaches America a LessonPatriot Post
Mr. Trump’s political malpractice has been to fail, since his election, to increase his popularity and thus his power. He has a core but it remains a core. He could have broadened his position with a personal air of stability and moderation, and with …

Top stories of 2017: Elections bring changeSalisbury Post
Some 30 people died of opioid overdoses in Rowan in 2016. Totals for 2017 are yet to be reported, but with more addicts using fentanyl, a highly powerful synthetic opioid, the toll likely will be much higher. Fatal overdoses reached 19 in one five …

Why Trump’s Middle East negotiator is beating expectationsThe Jerusalem Post
Still, despite Greenblatt’s efforts, there remains considerable frustration if not anxiety at the Trump administration’s reluctance to outline a deal. At the same August briefing with reporters, Zomlot wondered where the hell they are going …

Weeks ago, after Donald Trump accidentally confessed to felony obstruction of justice with a particularly stupid tweet, he claimed that his attorney had somehow written the tweet. While he was probably lying about this, it did help to confirm what Palmer Report has been documenting for several months: Trump handlers have been periodically tweeting from his account, trying to impersonate him, and failing to various degrees. Now they’ve become rather brazenly sloppy about it.

On Friday evening, Sarah Huckabee Sanders posted this to the @PressSec account on Twitter: “Reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with the regimes corruption and its squandering of the nations wealth to fund terrorism abroad. The Iranian government should respect their peoples rights including their right to express themselves. The world is watching.” Roughly two hours later, this tweet appeared on the @RealDonaldTrump account: “”Many reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with regimes corruption & its squandering of the nations wealth to fund terrorism abroad. Iranian govt should respect their peoples rights, including right to express themselves. The world is watching! #IranProtests”

To be clear, this was not a retweet or quoted tweet. This was an instance of Huckabee Sanders tweeting something to the Press Secretary account, and then later copy-pasting it to Donald Trump’s account, making only a handful of minor changes while leaving nearly all of the verbiage intact. How do we know Trump didn’t merely copycat Huckabee Sanders’ tweet? Some will claim that there’s some other theoretically possible explanation for how this happened, but those explanations will be nonsense. It’s clear what happened here.

This comes just two days after Donald Trump inexplicably retweeted a tweet from his social media director, Dan Scavino, which congratulated an Iowa football team for winning a college bowl game. Trump never does this with any team. This occurred within moments of Trump’s account retweeting tweets from Eric and Ivanka Trump. It’s fairly clear what happened here: Scavino used Trump’s account to retweet two of Trump’s children, and in the process, accidentally retweeted his own tweet about football. Why are Trump’s handlers resorting to impersonating him on Twitter? Has his senility become just that severe?

Did Russiagate Just Escalate Ukraine’s War?The Real News Network
And Trump has been giving these hawks, who are feeding off Russiagate, bits of what they want. The last bit are these weapons to Ukraine. It’s the only reason for it. It makes no sense. It’s detrimental to our national interests in every other regard…